Cover of the Sunday Business Post’s magazine commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The newspaper has been criticised for ‘airbrushing’ women, in particular Mo Mowlam, from the peace process.

Dr. Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

With the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), April 2018 was a milestone, filled with numerous events and discussions about the legacy of the peace settlement and its future prospects, both on the island of Ireland and internationally. Given my research on gender and post-conflict transformation, I was invited to the U.S. to speak at an academic event to mark two decades since the signing of agreement. As speakers, we were asked to reflect on the GFA’s legacy in bringing an end to decades of political violence and building peace for Northern Ireland. My aim was to discuss the implications for women’s citizenship that emerged throughout the peace process, drawing upon my research and over a decade spent in Belfast.

Cover of the Sunday Business Post’s magazine commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The newspaper has been criticised for ‘airbrushing’ women, in particular Dr. Mo Mowlam, from the peace process.

I began my contribution by acknowledging and discussing the role of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) as co-architects of the agreement. At the same time, I pointed out that the peace process has been ambivalent in addressing women’s demands for inclusion, equality and social justice, remaining therefore incomplete. My talk was abruptly interrupted by another participant who rebuked my assessment for “being ungrateful”. He then took his turn and offered what, he felt, was the proper account of the conflict and of the peace negotiations’ complexities. The gist of his intervention suggested that gender is not relevant to understanding the conflict in Northern Ireland. This is because more men than women died during decades of political violence. While acknowledging that women have suffered in the conflict, it was implied that the extent of this suffering was mostly confined to losing or caring for family members caught-up in the conflict.

I wish to dwell on this short-lived, yet telling, exchange to develop a reflection on the gender politics underpinning narratives of the Good Friday Agreement, as well as its 20th anniversary celebrations. Starting from the use of the word “ungrateful” to dismiss research that foregrounds women’s experiences and claims (how dare we critique the legacy of the peace process?), the arguments raised in response to my points offer a glaring example of a deep-seated reluctance to acknowledge that women and gender matter greatly in the politics of conflict and peace-making. To begin with, I was struck by the failure to even acknowledge evidence and research documenting the varied impact of conflict in women’s lives, such as the unequal economic and social hardship experienced by women in working-class and rural areas; women’s safety and gender based violence in relation to forms of paramilitary activity and sectarianism; the long-term effects of violence on health and well-being, and increasing caring responsibilities for women as a direct result of the conflict – for example, when family members were injured. Women’s (unequal) care and emotional labour, mentioned by my co-speaker, is indeed a poignant example of the gendered legacy of the conflict!

What is more, obscured in such gender-blind narratives are the complex ways in which women, in their diversity, participated in the conflict and peace process. It has been documented that some women were actively involved in protests, marches and more overt forms of political activism. Others explicitly engaged in the conflict as combatants in republican/nationalist paramilitary groups, and through supportive/less visible roles in loyalist groups. Some women were involved in community groups and grass-roots organisations that emerged predominantly in working-class areas, as a response to the deficiencies of direct-rule government in dealing with the social and economic needs of communities fractured by conflict and deprivation. In some instances, these kinds of supporting networks would also extend across divided communities. Although conflicting views on the constitutional issues and on the identification with feminism remained, civic activism provided a crucial platform for women’s active engagement during the conflict. When prospects for the peace settlement emerged in the late 90s, it offered a springboard for a more cohesive, and collective, albeit short-termed, mobilisation which led to the formation of the NIWC.

Not only do the arguments on gender’s irrelevance to understanding the complexities of the conflict suggest a partial view of its history, but this logic also sustains the tendency to dismiss women as full-fledged agents in the politics of the peace process. Beside my own experience at the international conference that prompted this reflection, this attitude has been on display during the GFA’s celebrations on occasions where women’s stake as co-architects in dealing with the legacy of conflict and building peace has been omitted or downplayed.

We should remember that when the Agreement was negotiated, women were unusually visible. Dr. Mo Mowlam, the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, played a tremendous role both in her personal and institutional capacity. Liz O’Donnell, as junior Minister of Foreign Affairs, also contributed to the talks as a member of the Irish government delegation. Martha Pope, Senator George Mitchell’s chief of staff, coordinated the involvement of the US delegation, playing an important formal and informal role during the negotiations.

Crucially, the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition (NIWC) participated in the multiparty negotiations through their elected representatives, Monica McWilliams and Pearl Sagar. As a cross-community party, the NIWC put an emphasis on maintaining the inclusive character of the negotiations process and in keeping open the lines of communication with civil society and political groups excluded from the talks. Particularly important was the Coalition’s achievement of a separate clause in the Agreement affirming the right of full and equal political participation for women. While we agree that the NIWC was not perfect and that not all women felt represented in their political stance, their contribution was remarkable on many levels. As Danielle Roberts has written, the coalition introduced the principles of inclusion, human rights and equality through their engagement in the negotiations. In the process they also had to find creative ways to navigate the hostile terrain of the male-dominated peace talks and establish working relationships with a wide array of actors. That women’s presence and contribution to the making of the GFA are dismissed in narratives of the peace agreement’s legacy is simply unacceptable.

What a reflection on the GFA’s 20th anniversary should also not downplay is that the aspirations for inclusion and equality included in the agreement have remained peripheral in the subsequent implementation and negotiation of the settlement. As I have argued elsewhere, the divisive nature of ethno-national politics has taken centre stage, also as a result of the power-sharing consociational formula deployed in the agreement. Gender concerns have been relegated to the margins of the dominant political agenda and often left unaddressed. Numerous reports highlight the continued economic and social hardship experienced by women living in divided and interface communities, and the lack of social services and education for young people in these areas. Women have continued to express concerns around issues of safety, violence and ‘new’ forms of paramilitary activity. Community activists report a lack of attention to the persistence of entrenched gendered violence and discrimination. The fight for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, challenged by conservative attitudes of major political parties, also continues thanks to huge efforts by individual activists and groups such as Alliance for Choice. As both Claire Pierson and Kellie Turtle point out, while there have been some gains in the field of political representation and in the leadership of major NI parties, women have had limited access to key institutions and processes that focus on unresolved legacies of conflict and crucial contested issues, such as the parade commission and more recently the ‘Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition’ Commission.

Generally, women’s and feminist groups have expressed dissatisfaction with a peace process wherein women and women’s claims are too often side-lined in favour of matters that are deemed of more immediate interest, such as ‘community relations’, ethnonational identity and stability/re-establishment of institutions. This marginalisation has been intensified in the recent political deadlock that led to the suspension of NI devolved institutions, as well as in discussion around the uncertainties over Brexit. In October 2017, I attended a consultation to discuss the implications for women, peace and security in the current moment of political crisis and uncertainty. Organised by Yvonne Galligan and Fiona Buckley, as chairs of the Gender Politics specialist group of the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI), the meeting included NI activists, community development experts and interested academics. Participants expressed concerns over the unfinished gender equality politics of the peace process, as well as over the return of zero-sum positions spurred by controversies in NI local politics and Brexit negotiations. Our discussion brought to the fore a sense that, yet again, a gender perspective and an attention to wider women’s concerns about the equality and rights agenda have been absent from political discussions over the future of the Agreement.

As fellow researchers and activists have argued, it is time that women’s contribution to building peace and their demands for social justice, equality and inclusion are fully acknowledged and taken seriously. That 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement these complexities continue to be dismissed in discussions on the legacy and future of the peace process is why we insist that women’s and feminist critiques, in their diversity, are not only heard but amplified at every opportunity.

The relationship between ‘Votes for Women’ and Early Women Lawyers in England and Wales: A glimpse into my PhD research by Laura Noakes

When my friend asked me what I was planning to study for my PhD, I told him I was investigating the relationship between the campaign for women’s suffrage and early women lawyers. He looked at me blankly. I said, “oh, you know—the suffragettes. Think Mary Poppins and the Pankhurst’s and throwing stones at windows.” He thought for a moment and then said, with a very serious expression on his face: “Suffragettes are a kind of Viking, right?”

It was probably at that admittedly hilarious moment that I realised why I thought my research was important. If you weren’t aware, the Suffragettes aren’t a type of Viking. They were women, members of a group dedicated to getting the parliamentary franchise for women. In fact, the Suffragettes were one of a myriad of groups that formed and campaigned for this goal—there were the organisations as diverse as the Actresses Franchise League, the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage, and my personal favourite, the Gymnastic Teachers’ Suffrage Society. All used diverse methods to bring attention to their cause, from petitions and demonstrations, to accosting MPs and committing arson, to throwing handbills out of dirigible air balloon at 3,500 ft! 2018 marks the centenary since *some* (believe me, it’s a very important distinction) women gained the parliamentary vote.

But suffrage is only a part of my research. I’m also interested in the slightly more niche topic of early women lawyers. Women couldn’t become either barristers or solicitors until after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was passed and became law. However, they could study law at university from the 1880s, and some women tried to enter the legal profession prior to the 1919 act. Some also practiced ‘unofficially’— at the borders of the legal profession.

I’m looking at this fascinating connection within the context of four women: Eliza Orme, Christabel Pankhurst, Helena Normanton and Chrystal MacMillan. All played pivotal roles in women entering the legal profession, and were also involved in the suffrage campaign. Their legal education helped to inform and influence suffrage tactics, and in turn their participation in the often misogynistic and sometimes violent campaign for Votes for Women prepared them for the trials and tribulation of their later careers.

Eliza Orme

Interestingly, two of these four women never officially practised law. Eliza Orme was born in 1848, and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act came too late for her to put her legal expertise into practice. However, she was the first woman in England to graduate with a Law degree in 1888. Eliza soon realised that the legal profession was well and truly shut to women, and so, instead of trying to be admitted in the traditional way, she skirted the rules and set up an office as a “devil” in Chancery Lane. A “devil” is sort of like a trainee barrister, and Eliza would have spent her time drafting documents for counsel. Eliza was involved in the National Society for Women’s Suffrage, the first national group dedicated to getting women the vote. She was also a passionate supporter of the Liberal party, even writing a biography of Sophia Fry, the founder of the Women’s Liberal Federation (WLF). However, cracks between her political ideology and her belief in women’s suffrage began to show when, in 1892, the WLF split over the issue of women’s suffrage. The problem was this: the political leaders of the Liberal party weren’t sold on the idea of women getting the vote. Some in the WLF thought that supporting women’s suffrage should become part of the official policy of the Liberals, whilst others felt that suffrage was too divisive an issue. Eliza fell into the latter group, putting party loyalty above suffrage ideals, and joined the Women’s National Liberal Association in protest. Thus, although Eliza was committed to the principle of women’s suffrage, her activism was somewhat limited, and her legal career was focused on working around the restrictions placed upon her because of her gender. She was involved in legal work till about 1904, and died—having seen the achievement of both suffrage and women lawyers—in 1937.

Christabel Pankhurst

Christabel Pankhurst also never practised law. She is probably the most well known of the women that I’m looking at, as she was the leading strategist of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), and a member of the famous Pankhurst family. However, she also graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Law from what is now the University of Manchester in 1906. She applied to study at Lincolns Inn, one of the four Inns of Court where barristers are called to the Bar, but was refused. She was also honorary secretary of the short lived ‘Committee to Secure the Admission of Women to the Legal Profession’. As such, although Christabel is better known for her suffrage campaign, she was committed to opening the legal profession to women. Christabel’s legal knowledge permeated her work for suffrage. On October the 13th 1908, Christabel was arrested because she handed out leaflets inviting people to “help the suffragettes rush the House of Commons”. She was charged with conduct likely to instigate a breach of the peace. As a law graduate, Christabel defended herself. She cross examined Cabinet ministers who had witnessed the rush, including Herbert Gladstone and Lloyd George, the latter a trained lawyer. Christabel managed to persuade Gladstone, who was clearly uncomfortable, to admit he that he hadn’t felt endangered by the rush, and also that some of his past speeches could have been interpreted as a similar incitement to violence. In her closing speech. Christabel argued that the case suggested that the independence of the judiciary was in doubt, invoking the famous legal document, the Magna Carta. Although she was found guilty, Christabel directly linked her legal knowledge to her campaign for the vote, and used her legal expertise to frustrate and challenge the Court, and Members of Parliament. For Christabel, who never formally qualified, her activism in the suffrage campaign was a priority. However, she used her legal knowledge to further this activism.

Chrystal Macmillan

Unlike Christabel and Eliza, Chrystal Macmillan did practice as a Barrister after the 1919 Act. Chrystal was a suffragist, not a suffragette. The suffragists used peaceful, constitutional means of campaigning for the vote, in contrast to the WSPU’s more militant strategies. She was the first female Science graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and it was this pioneering activity that led to her first Law related excursion. Graduates from the University were entitled to vote for an MP who would represent that University Seat in Parliament. Chrystal, and four other female graduates, therefore argued that this entitled them to the vote. This was an attempt by Chrystal, and by the suffrage campaigners at large, to circumvent Parliament’s unwillingness for women’s suffrage by asking the Court to give women the vote. Suffrage societies raised money so that Chrystal could take her case all the way to the House of Lords, then the highest Court in the Country. She was the first woman to argue her case in front of the House, however they held that the word ‘persons’ did not include women in the relevant statue. Yes, you read that right—women were not considered persons. After the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, Chrystal did enter the legal profession. She joined Middle Temple as a student barrister, was called to the Bar in 1924, and joined the Western Circuit in 1926 — she even founded the Open Door Council, an organisation that aimed to remove the legal restrictions on women. As such, Chrystal Macmillan combined her activism with her career, using both to further her feminist aims.

Helena Normanton

Helena Normanton’s suffrage campaigning differed from both Chrystal and Christabel’s—she was a member of the Women’s Freedom League. The WFL was a militant suffrage group that was formed in 1907 in a spilt from the WSPU. The main difference between the two groups was that the WSPU was autocratic, and the WFL democratic. Helena applied to join Middle Temple before the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, but was refused, and immediately on the Act receiving Royal Assent, she reapplied. Helena wasn’t the first woman called to the bar—Academic Ivy Williams beat her—but she was the first woman to practise, she was the first woman to obtain a divorce for her a client, the first woman to prosecute a murder case, and was appointed King’s Counsel in 1949. She was a campaigner for women’s right beyond the vote and making the law accessible for women, even writing a book on the subject—Everyday Law for Women. Helena was a prominent suffrage campaigner, and achieved many ‘firsts’ in terms of women in the Law.

So, why does this all matter? Why these women? Well all four of them were actively involved in the campaign for women’s votes. However, this involvement was diverse—Christabel was the autocratic leader of the suffragettes, Chrystal a constitutional suffragist, Helena was involved in the militant, but democratic Women’s Freedom League, and Eliza was first and foremost committed to the Liberal party. Despite this, they all received a legal education, and all of them utilised this education in their career, and in their suffrage activities. Christabel invoked complex legal concepts in defence of herself and suffragette militancy. Chrystal used her legal reasoning to argue for parliamentary votes for women in the House of Lords. Helena’s feminism extended beyond the vote—she campaigned for women’s rights in reforming divorce law and in keeping her maiden name professionally and on her passport. Eliza worked hard at the periphery of the legal industry, establishing an office on Chancery Lane, and in her political alignment furthered the cause of women, and in particular women’s work.

The reason why I’m so interested in the relationship between the suffrage campaign and early women lawyers, is because I think there is a unique and interesting dynamic between the fight for women to gain parliamentary representation, and the fight to be a legal representative in a court of law. Both invoke concepts of citizenship and of legal rights, and the legislation that allowed the entry of women into the legal profession and the right to vote were passed relatively close to each other—and it is these aspects that inspire the crux of my research. The next time I’m asked what is a suffragette is (NOT a Viking, FYI), and how they fit into my PhD research, I’ll direct the questioner to this article, in the hope that they’ll read it and find these four remarkable women as fascinating as I do!

Ageing is a complicated and subjective experience. To make sense of the variety of experiences that are popping up in the Western world, old age has been split into two cohorts by gerontologists as people seek to make distinctions between quality of life. Those in the Third Age (‘young-old’) have self-autonomy and the potential for a pleasurable post-retirement.[1] They also have pretty deeps pockets and will inevitably be targeted by marketing agencies looking to tap into the ‘grey pound’. In contrast, the Fourth Age (‘old-old’) is the type of old age largely ignored by society, where the deterioration of faculties and biological changes mean the ‘old-old’ are inherently imbued with a sense of otherness.

These are the people Age UK noted as most at risk from social care austerity. When we listen to the voices of older people, does it have to be framed through either fitness or frailty?

My larger PhD project uses these contemporary gerontological frameworks to approach poetry, art and prose written in the twentieth century by older, female modernists. I’m currently looking at work by H.D. (1886-1961), Mina Loy (1882-1966), and Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) to examine the tensions these authors faced as public figures ageing against the backdrop of the latter half of the twentieth century. Looking at the lived experience of the authors, as well as their own representations of ageing, I want to highlight the avant-garde nature and embodied creative process of these later works.

Because what happens when we begin to apply an understanding of lived experience to the voices of the past?

To (try to!) approach this question, this blog will take a brief look at Mina Loy and her final recording, made a year before her death. A complex intergenerational relationship emerges between the interviewer/interviewee. Despite sharing similar cultural touchstones, wires cross as moments are misheard and misinterpreted. There are expectations unmet and well-worn stories untold. The myth of Mina Loy is perhaps complicated when we finally hear her. So first – an introduction.

Mina’s Mythologies: A Brief Biography

When I first started reading modernist poetry as an undergraduate, I didn’t often think about the extended lives of my favourite authors. I was happy enough to stay in the Parisian Left Bank or New York jazz scenes, seeing dancing and bobs and poems as all bound up in the same heady cigarette smoke mist of the 1920s. This continued when I picked up a copy of Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedeker, edited by Roger Conover, Loy’s literary executor. I was instantly grabbed by a vision of feminine nonconformity:

For a brief period, early in the twentieth century, Mina Loy was the Belle of the American Poetry Ball. But by the end of the century, most had forgotten she was there at all.
On the evening of May 25, 1917, Mina Loy and Marcel Duchamp made their way to Greenwich Village’s “ultra bohemian, prehistoric, post-alcoholic” Webster Hall, where the twenty-third and final “Pagan Romp” of the season was just getting under way.

Again, Conover’s introduction spoke of glamour, jazz, fancy-dress, all night parties with Loy at the centre, knowing all the giants from James Joyce to Peggy Guggenheim, Ezra Pound to William Carlos Williams to Marcel Duchamp. And that’s just for starters. Having this legacy placed front and centre of The Lost Lunar Baedeker, prefacing any of her poems, it becomes hard to picture Loy as anything other than this modernist myth. A beautiful woman first, a poet second. This is not to say Conover doesn’t acknowledge Loy’s later work, the last half of the book features a picture of Loy as an ageing woman and her later poems. But how we begin to construct our understanding of our favourite writers and poets is, in many ways, sentimentally bound up in our first introductions to them.

And, chronology rules. We meet the youthful Loy before the older Loy:

Mina Loy, 1909. Photo by Stephen Haweis.

Mina Loy, Aspen, 1957. Photo by Jonathan Williams.

The mythmaking our favourite authors or poets undergo is a fascinating process. More often than not, our glamourised ideals of our favourite authors are crystallised by their relative youth. Mina Loy is often looked to as the quintessential ‘modern woman’. In her lifetime, she designed her own clothes, had affairs with Futurists, owned her own business, published poetry advocating ‘free love’ and had dalliances with a variety of twentieth century ‘isms’: Surrealism, Futurism, Dadaism, Symbolism, Feminism and Cubism all connect to certain sites of her oeuvre. She was also a quintessential modernist mover; she lived in Florence, Paris, New York, Berlin, Mexico City, London, Vienna, and Rio de Janiero. These lists are endless and often repeated.

Her later years have been characterised as eccentric; her assemblages were described at the time as “sentimental”, in contrast to the fast-paced, masculinised movement of Abstract Expressionism. In 1958, Loy had her final exhibition where these “sentimental” collages were exhibited. Depicting the ‘bums’ of the Bowery, where she lived during the time of making them, these arresting artworks show the grim post war, post-recession reality of New York. Loy settled in Aspen, Colorado to be near her daughters and receive late-life care in the 1950s. And that’s where her final interview was recorded in 1965.

“Bums Praying”, assemblage by Mina Loy, with Marcel Duchamp

The Last Interview

There’s a curious recording by Loy that you can listen to through Penn Sound. Recorded a year before her death, the ageing poet recalls her memories and reads out what has now become some of her most iconic poetry.

Paul Blackburn and Robert Vas Dias, two Black Mountain College alumni, interview her. The Black Mountain School was known for its non-conformist approach to education through extreme experimentation and collaboration across disciplines. So, this congregation of Blackburn, Vas Dias and Loy was a meeting of minds between experimental early and late twentieth century art makers, with expectations from the younger poets that they would hear the stories of the past so valued about Loy – who she knew, where she lived, how she fitted in. What actually transpires is over an hour of chat, shaggy dog tales, reminisces about the past, and attempts to pronounce the long, varied, experimental words that Loy loved to pepper her work with: ‘cornucopia’, ‘loquent consciousness’, ‘Parturition’. Loy also reads a few poems. Once Loy gets into the swing of the readings, the tremble in her voice is a sign of age rather than nervousness. She punctuates her readings to exclaim: “Wasn’t I clever”, “Wasn’t I wicked”. She laughs at her own jokes.

In the recording, she admits: “I’d only written these things for the sake of the sounds”. But what happens to sounds over the years? What we read in our head is not how poems sound when read aloud. The proximity to an author’s work, read by themselves, is a special moment – particularly when that poet has aged.

“When I first heard it, it gave me goose-bumps. It was an absolutely chilling and remarkable experience to hear her voice because it was the closest I ever came to her physical presence except in dreams” – Quoted in Jacket Magazine

This act of listening takes us to emotional and embodied levels that the written word often doesn’t allow for. The chilling quality of a voice crackling across the years – a voice read and re-read many times – is a unique type of haunting. The visceral quality of the recording is enhanced by the fact it was recorded in 1965. The crackling and distortion of reel-to-reel recording historicises the moment further.

Loy, at the age of 83, begins the interview saying ‘I never had any teeth all my life… Did I tell you that story?”. The interviewers concede she hasn’t, and Loy tells a tale of how, as a teen, a dentist gave her a filling by drilling down into the nerve of the tooth. Clamped by metal stays, she can’t move or run away (prompting the interviewer to say: “Sounds like a nightmare”, which in her evocative retelling, it does). After this experience, Loy vowed never to have a filling again opting to have her teeth pulled out instead. This rather long-winded tale results in finding out Loy had false teeth most of her life, but they didn’t bother her until old age. The false teeth, coupled with her slightly slurred speech, result in a set of poetic readings that situate the Loy of Conover’s avant-garde soirees in an altogether more everyday setting.

There’s part of me that feels like the interviewers treat Loy as an old lady. They politely laugh at her jokes, try and get her back on track, audibly sigh when she veers off again. The act of listening is undone as the interviewers prompt a seemingly frail poet in increasingly frustrated tones. I can’t help but feel annoyed at this veiled irritation and their over-loud and slowed down speaking. Because here Loy’s preoccupations are her own – and they’re not the preoccupations of modernist biographers. Instead, they are memories on a loop. A life relived through conversation that cannot be steered.

Listening, you get the impression the Blackburn and Vas Dias want Loy to recall the giants of modernism and wild parties that often frame her writing – they prompt her to read her poem about James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. My favourite moment is Loy not taking the bait and instead wondering over and over why Joyce had married his wife, Nora. She reminisces about the Florentine countryside and class systems and where her second husband, the famous Arthur Craven who disappeared off the coast of Mexico sailing a makeshift boat, ended up. The interviewers don’t ask to hear any of Loy’s later poems but if they did they’d find them to be full of Cold War existentialism, dealing with the shocks that the modern world had to offer: she wrote about the Atom Bomb, Bowery homelessness, film, literature and consumerism alongside her more well-known ruminations on gender and the body.

She’s in many ways a contemporary of the interviewers but at times they treat her like a relic from the past.

Of course, Loy was not completely forgotten. There were reprints of her poetry and an exhibition of her work in the 1950s and this interview in the 1960s. But, as she aged into the latter half of the twentieth century, her voice became less listened to.

That opening sentence in Conover’s introduction once more rings out:

For a brief period early in the twentieth century, Mina Loy was the Belle of the American Poetry Ball. But by the end of the century, most had forgotten she was there at all.

By the end of her life, her work and inventions may have sold, but not enough to sustain her. Her poems may have been read, but not enough to cement her in the canon. Just as society often fails to include older, female voices (unless you’re a feminist who has happened to age yourself, like Gloria Steinem) we might also be guilty of listening too often to the youthful voices of our favourite authors. So, in the spirit of listening to an old recording, grab those late works and flick through – they might just have something to say.

by Dr. Niki Nearchou, Assistant Professor at the School of Psychology, University College Dublin.

Photo: pexels.com

Mairy grew up living with her mother and stepdad, who used to drink and beat her mother every other day. Now she runs her own business and has two children. She feels that being a child was really hard but now all the wounds are healed .1

Eva was born in December 1942 at a labour camp in Czechoslovakia, and was almost 2 when she arrived in Auschwitz. Now she lives in Munich, Germany, and works as a psychotherapist .2

Alex was physically abused and neglected for years until the social services intervene and remove him from his family. Now, after graduating from college, he has his first job, lives on his own and thinks it’s time to propose to his girlfriend .1

These children are just a few examples of those who, despite being exposed during their childhood to remarkably adverse circumstances, managed to bounce back, cope with negative consequences and even thrive. This positive coping and adaptation despite experiencing distressful situations or traumatic life events is well known as resilience.

When I was starting to delve into the resilience literature as part of preparing my doctoral research proposal, I was stunned by how amazing children such as Alex or Eva, despite experiencing life events that no child should be ever exposed to, faced the risk and developed really well. I must admit, it crossed my mind that maybe there is something special about these children to make them fight and overcome such stressors in their lives. It seems that the notion of gifted and charismatic children dealing with risks was very existent in the resilience milieu, using at the time terms like invincible or invulnerable children. In 1975, Pines wrote one of the earliest articles on resilience titled “In praise of Invulnerables” for APA Monitor, while the next year (March 1976), The Washington Post published an article titled “Trouble’s a Bubble to Some Kids”, a headline implying that some children can burst out of their risk bubble and have happy, normal lives.

As I was unravelling the trajectory of resilience research, I realised that resilience in battered children is far more common than I had initially thought. Among the numerous exceptional scholars that have enriched resilience literature through the years, I was irresistibly attracted by Ann Masten’s work: “What began as a quest to understand the extraordinary revealed the power of the ordinary” 3. This powerful sentence summarizes the essence of resilience, and at the same time infuses hope. I strongly believe that this statement reflects the contemporary conceptualisation of resilience, which is defined as ‘a dynamic process that incorporates adaptation within the context of exposure to adversities.’4 Any discussion on resilience presupposes that the two following conditions are met: firstly, exposure to any kind of risk and secondly, effectively coping with any negative outcomes.

‘Participants who, while growing up, were supported by adults outside their family circle, continued their education and established a good relationship with a partner, developed to become competent and caring adults.’

The Kauai project followed a cohort of babies born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 1955, until they reached their mid 30’s. This ground-breaking study showed that certain clusters of factors operated protectively against adversities, such as parental psychopathology and poverty, and eventually promoted resilience. Participants who, while growing up, were supported by adults outside their family circle, continued their education and established a good relationship with a partner, developed to become competent and caring adults .5 The list of protective factors is long, and as research evidence suggests, is differentiated according to the type of risk. For example, while family support has been consistently reported as a protective factor for children and adolescents living in areas of armed-conflict,6 one significant adult member of their broader community network, was the agent that helped children cope with abuse.7

Nevertheless, there is a general agreement on three areas of protective factors, identified in individual characteristics (e.g. self-esteem, empathy, optimism), in the home environment (supportive and warm familial context) and in the social environment (school, work, community) 8. The severity of exposure to a traumatic event can be critical, no matter the presence of positive supports, and unfortunately some individuals will not bounce back.

Resilience has been extensively studied in relation to childhood maltreatment, resulting in a rich literature that constantly feeds the design of significant interventions in order to face trauma. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and neglect, are the four forms of childhood maltreatment inducing severe consequences on children’s welfare and development. Emotional (sometimes referred to as psychological) abuse has been reported as the most serious form of childhood maltreatment, and the most difficult to detect because usually it leaves no visible marks and can be more easily concealed.9

‘Positive teacher-student interactions have a substantial impact on children’s well-being’

When considering childhood maltreatment, we tend to plausibly think that family is usually involved, because by definition the term refers to an act of commission or omission (in the case of neglect) imposed by a caregiver. As a child grows up, school becomes the context in which he or she spends a significant amount of their time. Hence, it is not a surprise that school becomes the most important social environment after the family environment to influence emotional, cognitive and social aspects in children’s course of development. Positive teacher-student interactions have a substantial impact on children’s well-being, whereas negative relationships may have adverse outcomes. Although many educators tend to establish good, constructive relationships with their students using effective communication channels, research suggests that this is not always the case. Some studies report that specific teachers’ negative behaviours towards students, identified as Emotional Abuse by Teachers, may have negative psychological and somatic consequences on school-aged children 10.

Being increasingly involved with resilience readings, I could not but ask myself: If teachers’ negative behaviours have adverse consequences on students, are there perhaps some factors to counteract these consequences, diminish their effects and promote resilience? This was one of the questions upon which I based my doctoral research goals, i.e. to explore the role of a number of factors that promote resilience in school-aged children (9 to 12 years) exposed to incidents of emotional abuse by teachers. I was about to dive into totally unchartered territory, given that there is much research on protective factors associated with maltreated children within the family context, but none existing within the school context. The main pillar of my research was the hypothesis that since resilience is so well documented and evident for every form of child maltreatment, then somehow it should be linked to the research questions I sought to answer. Indeed, the findings revealed children that reported incidents of emotional abuse by teachers tend to present more behavioural difficulties when compared to children with no similar experiences. Self-confidence, a warm family environment and good relationships with peers were the factors that had a positive impact on behavioural adjustment in children that had experiences of emotional abuse by teachers.

The implications of these findings in the educational context are critical, suggesting that negative student-teacher interactions may result in unfavourable outcomes on children’s well-being. The key message is the power of the ordinary, reflected in this case upon the interactive power of friendships, of good parenting practices, and of enhancing self-confidence in young children. Are there maybe other individual and environmental factors that can promote resilience in children with negative schooling experiences? This question remains to be explored by future resilience studies.

These are cases of individuals I worked with during my professional practice as a counselor. The names are not real, the details have been altered and the individuals consented in using some part of their de-identified stories in this article.